Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 676
I have skipped over this brutal scene as quickly as I could. In all my life it is the thing of which I am least proud, but I must confess that even the next morning when I wakened I was not greatly repentant at once. Fighting, to a young man, is its own justification, in many ways. I had given them, as I saw it, fair play. They had the odds of three against one. For a time, I felt that it was a very considerable exploit.
So did the whole valley, which came to know of it when the doctor was brought in haste, before morning, to pay attention to Joe’s badly injured throat that I had gripped. The news slipped out while he was there, and he went away filled with the story, and made the very most of it.
After that, there was a shadow over me. I had acted like a wild beast, and people declared that I would continue to act like one and, on some unhappy day, commit a wholesale murder that would go down in black for many a year. There had been a good deal of sympathy for me up to this time, but after that, for a long period, people had little use for me.
I fled from the posses which I knew would come to the mountains, and in those five days, living like an animal rather than a man, I had enough time to think over my affairs and think over Mike O’Rourke particularly. What I decided was that as soon as possible I must get down to her again and speak to her as humbly as she wished. Because I realized now that I could not live happily without her.
It was eleven days after my last interview with her, that I stood again under the trees before the O’Rourke house and gave the whistled signal — gave it again and again, and heard not a sound in response. Then a door opened, but it was the form of a man which was silhouetted against the light within, and not the slender figure of Mike herself.
A man’s voice called: “Porfilo! Oh, Porfilo!”
It was O’Rourke himself. I had never seen his face in all the two years that I had known Mike. But I had heard his voice in the distance, and I knew it well enough now. I did not hesitate. I hurried across the open space and stood before that square-shouldered little man.
He looked up to me with his hands on his hips.
“Son,” said he, “will you come inside and have a talk?”
“You’ve got bad news,” said I. “I can listen to it just as well here in the dark.”
“You’ve got sense,” said he. “I’ve been listenin’ every night for that whistle of yours. I figgered you’d be back again, no matter what Mike said.”
“What did she say?” said I.
“It would worry you a bit, Porfilo, if I was to tell you. Because I figger that you’re kind of fond of her.”
“I love Mike!” said I.
“The devil!” said O’Rourke. “I knew it! But there ain’t no way of riggerin’ a girl. I never gave her mother no twelve-hundred-dollar boss. But Mike, she’s got a sort of a change of heart — for a while, at least.”
“What did she say?” I asked him.
“That she don’t expect to never see you no more, Porfilo.”
I accepted this blow in silence simply because I was unable to speak.
“She told me,” went on O’Rourke, “that if the worst come to the worst, and you come back here again and give her a signal — which she told me what it was — I was to come out and tell you that she didn’t aim to see you again. That’s why I answered you tonight!”
“She’s inside and knows you’re out here?” I asked him bitterly.
“No. She’s gone up the valley to the schoolhouse. There’s a dance there. Porfilo, I got to say that I’m sorry about this mess.”
“It makes no difference,” said I gloomily. “She could never have married an outlawed man!”
“Oh,” said O’Rourke, “you’ll come out on top in the end. The law ain’t framed to get a gent with an honest heart. It won’t get you, Porfilo!”
I left good-natured Pat O’Rourke with this kind assurance from him and headed up the valley at the best speed of my mule — that swinging, rhythmic gait, half amble and half trot, done with a sway of the body that gave the shambling creature almost the stride of a hard-galloping horse.
I knew the schoolhouse. It lay between two little villages eight miles away, with a steeple like a church’s pricking against the side of the mountain behind it. All was in the full blast of a dance when I arrived. The orchestra was rasping out a two-step, and I heard the whispering sound of many feet sliding on the waxed floor.
I left Roanoke in a position with regard to the best means of escape if it came to a pinch — and that was through one of the big, open windows rather than the door, for it was my fixed determination to enter that room, see Mike with my own eyes, if she were there, and then get out of the place as best I could. If there were trouble, they were more apt to try to cut me off at the doors than at the windows.
So I chose a window on the side of the building. Beneath the trees, a short distance away, I left Roanoke. Then I used a handkerchief to whip the dust away from my clothes and my boots and started toward the door.
The jingling of my spurs attracted attention first. Men do not attend dances in spurs; not even in the West. As I passed through a shaft of light from the very window which I had chosen as my probable one for exit, the giggling of a girl in the shadows ceased, and I heard her subdued voice: “Why, that almost looks like Porfilo!”
“You’re seein’ things,” said her witty escort.
I rounded the front of the building and pressed in among the men at the door.
I had not taken a step among that crowd at the door, before they gave way on either side of me with a little whisper of awe and fear, and somewhere at the side I heard a frightened murmur: “Porfilo!”
The two-step had ended, the people had scattered to the edges of the room, and now the orchestra was tuning up for the next waltz, and there was a grand bustle as the men left their last partners and searched for their next ones. But my glance went, like the needle to the north, straight to the shining red head of Mike O’Rourke and, beside her, the lofty form of Andrew Chase.
I saw that and I saw, moreover, that there were no other men clustering about her — Mike, who drew men as honey draws bees! I knew what that meant. She was too happy with her present partner to invite attention from other men.
A mist of black hate flushed across my eyes. I looked away and found the blue eyes of a golden-haired girl close by fixed wide upon me. The orchestra had begun the strains of the dance. Yonder girls and men were stepping onto the floor and beginning to spin away, but all this end of the big room was filled with standing, gaping couples, staring at me as though I had been a ghost.
In fact, with my rough clothes, none too clean, the great spurs on my heels, the cartridge belt strapped about me, and a heavy holstered gun hanging at either hip, the sombrero clapped upon my head to make me still taller, and my long, black hair projecting from beneath it — for it had not been cut for a month — I must have looked the part of a pirate.
Besides, to make me all the more vivid in their eyes, there was the tale of how I had smashed my way into the cabin of the Ricks brothers and beaten three men to insensibility; that story was hardly more than a week old. They stared at me as though the crimson stains were still visible.
I stepped past the gaping youngster who stood with the blue-eyed girl.
I simply said: “I don’t have many chances to dance. Will you give up this turn with your partner, friend?”
He shrank from me with a sick grin, as though I had stuck a loaded gun under his nose. I shied my hat across the room and shook back my hair. I said to the girl:
“I’ll promise to keep my spurs out of the way if you’ll let me have this dance.”
She had been a little pale when I stepped up to her, but Western girls are bred and raised to the understanding that, no matter how terrible men may be in their own element, with women they must be lambs or else pay the consequence; and now she suddenly laughed up at me.
“There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do!” said she.
We stepped off into the dance. Something like a groan of wonder started behind us and circled the room. A hundred heads began to turn toward us.
“You’re out of step! You’re out of step!” cried my partner under her breath. “Seeing Margaret O’Rourke threw you out, I suppose!”
I took a firmer grip on myself and stepped into time with the music.
“You’re a fine fellow,” said I. “I don’t care a rap what Margaret O’Rourke is doing.”
“Ah, but I know!” said she.
“What’s your name?”
“Jessie Calloway.”
“Jessie, this is my first dance in two years, and probably my last dance in twenty more. I don’t want to think about anything but the music and you.”
After that, she made it easy enough to forget the rest of the world. I shut out all thought of Mike O’Rourke, even if my heart of hearts were aching for her. I concentrated on that laughing, good-natured, freckle-nosed girl, and she repaid me. If I were not happy, she made me seem so. That was what I wantedto make Mike understand that I could live very pleasantly without her.
It was a boy’s thought, but I was only twenty. In another moment I was really having the time of my life.
There were not half a dozen other couples on the floor; and most of these were dancing automatically, while the rest of the crowd was banked along the edges of the hall and thick around the door, staring at this strange picture of the outlaw as he spun with the dance and his long, black hair floated out behind him.
It was more than mere watching, too. I saw some of the older and graver men drawing together in the doorway and then pushing their way through the crowd in front of them, and they carried drawn guns in their hands.
But that was not all. Most of all, I was conscious of Mike O’Rourke, dancing in the arms of Andrew Chase. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to me. It was all the more delightful because I knew that they were thinking of nothing but me. Mike was acting admirably, chatting and laughing as well as she could, but the face of Chase was a face of stone. Only his eyes held any emotion. He was fighting mad, I knew. For he had let the whole range of the mountains understand that he intended to blow my head off my body. Here I was dancing in the same room with him!
Of course, there was very little that he could do.
He could hardly stride up to me with level gun in the midst of the dance. Besides, the whole crowd was falling into the spirit of the thing. The old violinist, who had played for dances during half a lifetime, had climbed down from the teacher’s platform — which was the musicians pedestal — and now he advanced a little on the floor and began to play very pointedly for me, nodding and smiling to me with the end of his violin tucked under his old chin and turning toward me every time I swung into a different section of the hall.
“Look!” cried Jessie Calloway.
By the ill luck of the very devil, someone had managed to get word to Sheriff Lawton, who happened to be close by; and now here he was, coming with half a dozen men behind him. I swung Jessie toward the window and pretended not to see.
“Keep close to me — and they won’t shoot!” said the brave youngster, and, though she was trembling, she never lost the beat.
Out of a circling spin of the waltz I stepped back suddenly under the very window itself. I caught up Jessie Calloway in my arms and kissed her in the sight of all of them — and then I leaped through the open window into the dark of the night.
I landed safely and sprinted straight down the side of the building and gained the shadows of the trees as two men leaned from that same window and opened fire.
They lost sight of me, and in ten strides I had reached Roanoke. Then off and away down the road to freedom; I flashed into view of the light in the opened doors of the building, now raging with excitement, and a score of people, catching sight of me, waved and raised a great cheer. It was sweet in the ears of Leon Porfilo, I swear!
XXIV. IN CROTHERS CANYON
THERE WAS NO real enmity between Sheriff Lawton and me. In fact, if it had not been that the law forced him to be against me, I know that we would have been the best of friends. But on this night, with all that crowd looking on, he would have done his best to get me, even if I had been his blood brother. If it had been merely brains against brains, no doubt he would have succeeded; but it was horse against Roanoke.
In the open the horses would have won, but there was no open. I saw to that. I put Roanoke straight at the hills, and he went up the first one at a gallop that killed off the sheriff’s horse when he attempted to follow. Roanoke himself was breathing hoarsely when he gained the crest, but the sheriff’s mount was fairly staggering, and before I had put another steep hill between me and Lawton, the pursuit was distanced. I let Roanoke drop to his wolf trot, and we glided smoothly through the night and away from trouble.
Altogether, it had been a foolishly spectacular adventure, but I was rather glad of the whole affair. It had given me another glimpse of Mike; it had show me Andrew Chase, and, somehow, I felt that after this night Chase would not appear such a perfect hero in her eyes.
I headed back for the high places, making a three-day detour to accomplish what I could have managed by a single half day of air-line riding. I dropped in at the house of Lefty Curtis who had at one time or another helped me in the way of picking trails, but was nevertheless a friend of Tex Cummins also.
He gave me a gloomy look which boded trouble, and Mrs. Lefty had no other greeting than a nod for me.
“Look here, Lefty,” said I, “you mustn’t treat me as if I were a thug come to hold you up. What’s the matter?”
He avoided the question for a time, but afterward he said: “Tex Cummins has been to see me. He swears that you picked up the trail of Sam Moyer from my house.”
“I picked it up above your house,” said I. “If I meet Tex, I’ll tell him so!”
“If you meet Tex,” said Lefty with a sour grin, “you won’t meet him alone. He means business this time, and he’s going to give you a mite of trouble, Porfilo — mule or no mule! They tell me that the thing hops up the face of a cliff like a dog-gone kangaroo!”
“Never mind the mule. You ought to be glad that I found Sam. Because, when I left him, he told me to be sure to remember him to you.”
“As far as Tex goes,” said Lefty, “I ain’t no slave of his. Besides, he’ll know that I played square with him, if he thinks things over. Have you seen Chet O’Rourke yet?”
I knew that Chet O’Rourke was one of Mike’s brothers, but I had no more seen him than I had seen her father, up to four nights before, and I told Lefty as much.
“He came up here two days ago,” said Lefty, “and he’s been buzzing around that he expects to meet you in the Crothers Canyon any time before noon any day. He’s waitin’ there for you. Maybe the fool wants to get famous! Maybe he wants the blood money that’s hangin’ on you, old son!”
I spent that night with Lefty, gathering in the news, and there was plenty of it. Poor Lawton was half mad, it seemed. The governor had heard this last story about my appearance at the dance right under his nose.
Of course, I hadn’t the least idea that Lawton was within miles of the dance. Who would have expected him to be? Indeed, it was only chance that had brought him there. The governor of the State had sent a telegram to Lawton:
Get Porfilo. Use every possible endeavor. Will give you military assistance if you need it. You are allowing Porfilo to make law and the State government ridiculous.
Lawton, in an ecstasy of shame and rage, wired back his resignation from his office, because some enterprising newspaper had managed to lay its hands upon that telegram, and the result was that every newspaper in the State caught up this juicy morsel and spilled it in liberal capitals across the front pages. The governor had replied that he knew of no better man than Lawton for the post, and would consider it a shirking of duty if the latter left his post.
“And,” said Lefty, “all that Lawton and his gang are doin’ now is sittin’ and prayin’ that God’ll be good enough to give ’em a crack at you. Lawton has wore out three hosses in three days. But he’s just ridin’ around in circles and gettin’ nowhere!”
There were still echoes of the Sam Moyer affair, too. People on the whole seemed rather glad that the bank robber had been stripped of his plunder, but the law could not see it in that way. The only legal cognizance that was taken of the affair was that I had broken into the house of a citizen whose door was locked and who had insisted that I remain outside. Once inside, I had attacked “with intent to kill.”
That was the whole thing done up in a nutshell! How could I make any answer to it? Sam Moyer disappeared from the adventure. There only remained the wrong that I had done to the Ricks brothers, and nothing at all was said of their guilt in having offered refuge knowingly to a violator of the law like Moyer.
“No matter what I do,” I sighed to Lefty, “I get more and more in wrong.”
“Not a bit, kid,” said Lefty. “We know, and the rest of the bunch know, that you’re square. If the governor is a flathead, does that really make any difference? Look here, Porfilo; if the whole bunch in the towns and the range really wanted to get you, don’t you think that they’d do it pretty slick and easy? Sure they would! But it’s only the sheriffs and a few head hunters that go after you. The rest of the boys sit back and wish you luck. They know that you ain’t out to bother no honest man that is mindin’ his own business. You think they ain’t took note that you make your money off the crooks and the thugs?”
I had never thought of that before. But, as a matter of fact, I had always been received in a very friendly manner. I had the instance of my adventure in the schoolhouse dance, when half a hundred armed men had let me remain in a room for three minutes without raising a hand to get me. If they really felt that I was an enemy to society, I could not have lasted three seconds. They were afraid of me, naturally, because there had been so much talk, and because they never knew what I was going to do next, but they did not actually hate me.
